Merely a Caveman.

This ain’t sexy. If anyone ever tells you writing a book is sexy, well, they are spinning a yarn right in front of your very eyes (ears?). If someone at a cocktail party or school bus stop ever pronounces, “I am writing this book, and it feels sooooo good,” my advice is to spin on your heels unceremoniously and speed walk in the opposite direction. That person isn’t right in the head.

Because at least at this early stage, I feel more like an Australopithecus than a Renaissance painter. Actually, that’s a crap analogy. I sat in those Art History courses. So I do recall that Michelangelo endured hellish conditions and physical suffering whilst painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling, lying prone on rickety scaffolding for months at a time some 500 years ago. This is Pre-Advil, mind you. Not to mention the mental angst associated with stressing over the integrity of “scaffolding” constructed in the 1500s. Those houses of cards crash all the time, man, even the modern ones. I refuse to walk underneath anything even resembling scaffolding for fear of the whole thing collapsing on my head. Not a huge issue here in San Francisco. But in NYC? My zigging and zagging on the bustling sidewalks is definitely outlying behavior. Deservedly triggering perturbed expressions from everyone else walking with purpose, regardless of the dangers lurking overhead.

But I digress. (Note: “But I digress” would make a lovely book title, no?).

I have roughly 200 pages of raw material already written for this book of mine. But I have to identify some sort of viable infrastructure by which to organize this content. So although typing away on a MacBook Air, I am actually reduced to using Stone Age tools. Smashing blog posts together and ripping them apart, angrily expecting them to stick together by sheer force. Only to have them fall to the floor when I separate my meaty caveman hands. “Aargh!” “Ooooogh!” Insert whatever caveman-type utterances you fancy here. You get the picture. It’s hard work. But hopefully totally worth it. And so, back to Olduvai Gorge….